in development Vulkan API Discussion

[Nomatic]

I gotta agree @Raven (Elysian Angel). Especially when it pertains to the core game engine and so many players are very interested. While I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer, I’m no longer expecting an update in 2021. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’ll just be surprised and happy when we do get an update. So long of course, as it’s not another year away. 
 

i’m hopeful overall though. 

[Mr_sukebe]

Whilst also having my fingers crossed, have to say that I'm doubtful about this year.

My understanding was that there was a need to update lots of textures and similar to ready DCS for Vulkan.  If that's the case, I'm assuming that all of the older aircraft would be getting a bit of a spruce up, which has happened to the A10c and I believe the Ka50 is en route.

That does however leave aircraft like the Mi8, and I've seen nothing mentioned about that.

[St4rgun]

It was mentioned by the devs that Vulkan development has good progress. It was back in 2018...

Since then in the 2021 january newsletter it was mentioned to be PLANNED to release in Q3.

 

Now Q3 2021 practically ends.

Not a single hint or trace about Vulkan yet.

 

At the beginning of 2020(!) this interesting conversation surfaced on reddit: 

 

Q: "Miss Perederko, Will DCS continue to use Deferred Shading with the full migration or go back to forward rendering?"

 

A: "I will not give you a direct answer and keep it for internal use. However, Vulkan is not linked to a particular way of rendering. We'll take advantage of that freedom to optimize the performance and deliver a better picture. Kate Perederko, COO ED"

 

I understand that for every project to give feasible timeline estimation it's advised to apply Murphy's law: get the predicted development time, multiply it by 2 and switch it to one step bigger scale (i.e. 2 weeks^TM job will need 4 months). 

 

Now we are talking about YEARS of development.

In january they had to be some kind of "certain" that implementing Vulkan should be finished in 1-2 months to be able to "PLAN" Q3 for deployment and write it down in a newsletter.

 

But we still only got silence, which induces frustration.

 

I'd also be the happiest to know, that the next possible BIG update (somewhere in October) will include core tech migration as well including Vulkan, but if the news is "bad" like "forget 2021, we should wait at least for 2022", then let it be.

 

Just say us a word.

 

Please.

[Ala13_ManOWar]

It was said like 2 years ago (before World Pandemic, I guess) that migration to Vulkan was complete internally and they were "just" porting every single shader (thousands) one by one to the new engine. I guess that takes more time than it looks like at first.

 

S!

[St4rgun]

The current situation with GPU market implies that we'll be unable to buy any strong GPU for a reasonable price in the next year or more.

This is really sad, but at the same time it's the BEST moment right now to help the users with next gen VR headsets (like G2) to be able to squeeze all the available horsepower from current hardware.

 

Optimization is a MUST these days. If only the long journey of Vulkan reach to the end right now then it would be heaven for DCS users.

Let the VR users also experience the "OMG" factor of this extraordinary game in its full glory.

 

[JayRoc]

Well last i heard they said Q3 this year...but maybe its 2 weeks (TM). You never know.

[Hive]

59 minutes ago, St4rgun said:

The current situation with GPU market implies that we'll be unable to buy any strong GPU for a reasonable price in the next year or more.

This is really sad, but at the same time it's the BEST moment right now to help the users with next gen VR headsets (like G2) to be able to squeeze all the available horsepower from current hardware.

 

Optimization is a MUST these days. If only the long journey of Vulkan reach to the end right now then it would be heaven for DCS users.

Let the VR users also experience the "OMG" factor of this extraordinary game in its full glory.

 

Right. And even if you buy the strongest GPU for the must unreasonable price, you still won't have enough horsepower for a VR experience at maximum fidelity. So it is even more relevant. We can just hope that Vulkan will be implemented any time soon AND will bring a performance boost. And then imagine what DLSS could do!

[falcon_120]

I do think an update of the roadmap is needed, be it 1 month or 14. But wait is more bearable when you have an ETA.

Enviado desde mi ELE-L29 mediante Tapatalk

[St4rgun]

1 hour ago, falcon_120 said:

I do think an update of the roadmap is needed, be it 1 month or 14. But wait is more bearable when you have an ETA.

Enviado desde mi ELE-L29 mediante Tapatalk
 

Absolutely.

As I recall all previous new things HAD some preliminary news before deployment regardless being new features / modules.

I mean like the sneak peak videos now with the AH-64D, the pictures and videos of the new clouds before 2.7 and even news about the lighting changes before 2.5.6 back then.

 

Now I feel that we got only silence.

 

Not a single demo video, not an image, not a predicted framerate data or any other new feature list.

Nothing about Vulkan specific, which can be judged and compared to the previous engine performance / quality.

 

But why? Meanwhile the last predicted ("planned") ETA of Q3 2021 silently passed...

 

IMHO it would be unprecedenced for ED to give the community the engine migration as a well kept secret gift without preliminary hints.

 

What's in the background?

 

I'm a grown up person (nearly 50), but I'm waiting for Vulkan as a child waits for a christmas present. 

My expectations are enormous.

[gorzasty]

Look at the Xplane 11. Vulcan is not a miracle. They need to change entire engine I think and this is not gonna happen in the near future. So Vulcan probably gives us some new bugs and maybe 5fps more... Im sceptic.

Wysłane z mojego SM-G960F przy użyciu Tapatalka

[Ala13_ManOWar]

1 hour ago, St4rgun said:

But why?

 

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I'm a grown up person (nearly 50), but I'm waiting for Vulkan as a child waits for a christmas present. 

My expectations are enormous.

You answered the question yourself. Why they no longer say a thing about future projects but until it's already to be released few days later?

People expectations are too high for whatever reason it is, people get too nervous about next projects/release dates, people want things right now or the day before, but software development to the highest level as DCS is takes time, a lot of time. It's not Tetris they are coding, hence so many times it takes many more time that anybody can foresee and people expect miracles in the form of ridiculously short development times. Better not to say a thing and it's fixed, that way when they release anything new be it modules, features, whatever people get hyped in the right time but not before, specially too much before.

 

S!

[falcon_120]

You answered the question yourself. Why they no longer say a thing about future projects but until it's already to be released few days later?

People expectations are too high for whatever reason it is, people get too nervous about next projects/release dates, people want things right now or the day before, but software development to the highest level as DCS is takes time, a lot of time. It's not Tetris they are coding, hence so many times it takes many more time that anybody can foresee and people expect miracles in the form of ridiculously short development times. Better not to say a thing and it's fixed, that way when they release anything new be it modules, features, whatever people get hyped in the right time but not before, specially too much before.
 
S!

I do not agree. Obviously there has to be a sweet spot between silent and telling too much, which is no good, but in general, the way you keep clients engaged and involved is by treating them as investors or important stakeholders, letting them know when important milestones are postponed or delayed.

A perfect Customer management in this case is something like: (August 2021)"Guys we know we estimated a Q3 vulkan realease, we were really going for it, however current progress and complexity of the task, as well as some other very expected items has made us rethink the roadmap, we are aiming at Q3 2022 with confidence..."

That's it, no more questions until next july/August...

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[Ala13_ManOWar]

58 minutes ago, falcon_120 said:

That's it, no more questions until next july/August...

Agree there may be other ways, but you know "no more questions" is illusory knowing the community.

 

S!

[St4rgun]

12 hours ago, gorzasty said:

Look at the Xplane 11. Vulcan is not a miracle. They need to change entire engine I think and this is not gonna happen in the near future. So Vulcan probably gives us some new bugs and maybe 5fps more... Im sceptic.

Wysłane z mojego SM-G960F przy użyciu Tapatalka
 

It's not only about the fps increase.

It's about the possibility to refactor the whole codebase, possible to change back to forward rendering which could solve the AA bugs of DCS in VR.

 

Eliminating the jaggies and shimmering, the lighting errors, the rendering bugs of transparent textures AND fps increase.

 

The Vulkan migration means completely rethink and modernize a decade old engine which is not built from the ground up with VR in mind.

It WAS a very important decision for ED in the past to go the Vulkan way while also working on the multithreading optimization in parallel.

 

I'm pretty sure, that when it will be ready this will change the VR experience in DCS a LOT.

 

Surely, it's az enormous task, so it's impossible to estimate the correct ETA at the beginning.

But they are working on this migration process for more than TWO YEARS.

During that time they had the possibility to fine tune the ETA. They had to think about something when they set Q3 2021 in the January newsletter.

 

It's not fair to say "not raise the expectations too high" when the newsletter says this:

"Vulkan API and Multi-threading

With the integration of these libraries, DCS will benefit from improved performance throughout, including in virtual reality. This has been a substantial task to develop and integrate into our codebase, but we are nearing the end of this journey, and expect it to be available in the 3rd quarter of this year."

 

All right, we are expecting. Now what?

 

How much more time should we expect?

• about a week
• about a month
• maybe a quarter
• possibly half a year
• about a year
• years
• no one knows right now, but maybe never can be done because of unforseen issues

The devs MUST be able to choose one of the previous options. I'm sure they can.

The second decision is how and when to tell it to us.

 

Please.

Edited October 1, 2021 by St4rgun

[BIGNEWY]

Hello all, 

 

work is progressing with vulkan but we are not ready to share any news yet. 

 

Thank you for your patience

 

The Eagle Dynamics Team

[St4rgun]

1 hour ago, BIGNEWY said:

Hello all, 

 

work is progressing with vulkan but we are not ready to share any news yet. 

 

Thank you for your patience

 

The Eagle Dynamics Team

 

9 hours ago, St4rgun said:

How much more time should we expect?

• about a week
• about a month
• maybe a quarter
• possibly half a year
• about a year
• years
• no one knows right now, but maybe never can be done because of unforseen issues

The devs MUST be able to choose one of the previous options. I'm sure they can.

 

Well, at least we can hopefully erase the last option from my previous list. 

Unfortunatelly not too many of other options got harmed during BN-s answer...

 

It is still mysterious why there is no development reports on this topic like for the modules (i.e. AH-64D) about the progress. Strange.

This could be some form NDA or something.

 

Anyway, if the team is "not ready to share any news yet" then we only left with the hope for the next big update.

Then the next one.

And so on.

Edited October 1, 2021 by St4rgun

[Mr_sukebe]

I agree with ED not sharing progress on this.

After all, when they talk about "good progress", there's usually demands of why it can't be introduced in the next release.  When it's not going well, then ED are accused of simply being inept, which is grossly unfair and unreasonable (as clearly they're not).

[St4rgun]

Actually ED shared progress on this topic at the very moment they announced it can be expected in Q3 2021.

Right now the "we are not ready to share any news yet" standrard reply template IS the biggest news: it means it's not ready, because Q3 is over.

 

The community never wanted to write the ETA for the devs, it would be insane. They're just asking for rough estimates.

Sometimes ED gives estimates, sometimes they misses them.

 

But it's always much better to correct yourself and give a new estimate according to your best actual knowledge on the topic.

Not an exact date, but a ballpark.

 

Why?

 

Because it's the polite way if the community asks for it.

 

I'm sure, that responsible people like us who are working as developers themselves on different projects in the world won't be upset if a deadline is missed and should be corrected.

But the radio silence and lack of communication is never a good path.

[pastranario3]

Don't forget that ED supposedly started work with Vulkan in 2019, or so they said. Therefore it "should not" be something recent.

[St4rgun]

As I understand this full engine migration task is the biggest of all the work for ED, much bigger than making a new module.

 

That is right. The problem is that at the current business model the DCS World product is FREE, while the modules are not.

For ED it's much more profitable to make the modules for selling them $50-$80 each than spending countless man-hours on the migration of the "free" engine. It is more than understandable.

 

But personally I've spent around $1000 for 20 different modules during the past years.

Not calculating the HW costs (VR headset, PC hardware, hotas etc).

 

For me it would be an absolute feasible solution to PAY for the Vulkan migration at least the same price as for a new module ($50-$100).

If that would help that process to avoid the "neverending" status, then let it be.

 

Everyone will benefit from the migration, regardless of the modules they have and the applied technology being VR or 2D.

Don't get me wrong I'm also happy for a new module like the Apache, but that's "only" another one module in my list.

 

But Vulkan would change the feel of ALL my modules.

 

 

Edited October 2, 2021 by St4rgun

[wilbur81]

41 minutes ago, St4rgun said:

For me it would be an absolute feasible solution to PAY for the Vulkan migration at least the same price as for a new module ($50-$100).

 

 

 

 

The same for me as well.  Vulkan would be WAY more valuable to me right now than any module that I don't currently own... and I only own a few by comparison to many others.

[St4rgun]

22 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

I agree with ED not sharing progress on this.

After all, when they talk about "good progress", there's usually demands of why it can't be introduced in the next release.  When it's not going well, then ED are accused of simply being inept, which is grossly unfair and unreasonable (as clearly they're not).

 

I promise this will be my last argument on this topic.

Check this out: https://www.psychologyofgames.com/2019/10/loading-when-were-willing-to-wait/

 

The most important part:

Quote

The idea is pretty simple: show people what’s taking so long and they’ll be more satisfied with the experience. Sometimes they may be even more satisfied despite a longer wait.

 

And this one:

Quote

But users may appreciate seeing some of the work and it may make them more understanding and more willing to wait.

 

Thanks for every info from the devs. If possible.

[slowmover]

I am very curious to see what Vulcan will bring to VR user. We will be able to see the same quality as 2D or close at least? Cause flying in 30-40 fps for now it is just okay.

[Mr_sukebe]

4 hours ago, slowmover said:

I am very curious to see what Vulcan will bring to VR user. We will be able to see the same quality as 2D or close at least? Cause flying in 30-40 fps for now it is just okay.

agreed.

I’m hoping that the benefits will be similar to those that I saw in a civilian sim, which for me was a 50% improvement in frame rate and a massively smoother experience 

[Hoirtel]

25 minutes ago, Mr_sukebe said:

agreed.

I’m hoping that the benefits will be similar to those that I saw in a civilian sim, which for me was a 50% improvement in frame rate and a massively smoother experience 

I hoping that it reduces the strain in areas with lots of objects so that there isn't such a large difference in fps.